Looking for Home Runs

Antique dealers are always looking for home runs. That is to say, they are looking for items that are undervalued, so undervalued that you know you will make ten or twenty times your money. It happens, of course. Not as often as one would like, but it does happen.

And yet home runs may not be an easy sell. Home runs actually require the right person to see the item. These right people are as important to me as the home runs themselves. I could go to museums with them, watch a movie, do just about anything with them as they are the sort of people who look for and find subtlety, who are not obsessed with finding something that fits but who want something that is great.

There are a number of dealers that qualify as home runs. These are the dealers who understand greatness. More often than not, someone who has made a life’s work of being an expert in one field understands subtlety, craft, and aesthetic value in other fields. Not always, however, which is quite surprising. This is a business first, I suppose, but it is hard not to believe in romance.